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When a No is a Yes

Posted on by Steven Stechschulte

By Nicholas Blattner, OFM Cap.

Your experience of interacting with your parents as a young person might be very similar to mine. I remember countless times when I asked my mom and dad for permission to do something or to go somewhere with my friends, only to be met with a quick and firm “no”. This, of course, frustrated me to no end. My friend’s parents let them do what they wanted, why couldn’t they? Why were they so opposed to me having fun? Why was their answer always “no”? Well, maybe not always “no”, but as a teenager it definitely felt like it. But as I grew older, and a little wiser, I slowly started to better understand the true meaning behind their “no”. I’ll give you an example.

I remember the first time I had to watch my little niece, Adyson. My parents had an in-ground pool, and I was responsible for making sure she was safe. I distinctly remember telling her “Adyson, be careful”, “Adyson, no running” or “Adyson you are too close to the pool”. And then in that moment it struck me: the reason my parents often said “no” to me was because they loved me and wanted to keep me safe.

What does this story of my mom and dad always saying “no” have to do with today’s Gospel? Have you ever noticed how many times Jesus says “no” to those around him? He did it in the Gospel today. Let me reread you a portion of it again, with a few of my own words sprinkled in. “At daybreak, Jesus left and went to a deserted place. The crowds went looking for him, and when they came to him, they tried to prevent him from leaving them. But he said to them, “No. I cannot stay with you. To the other towns also I must proclaim the good news of the Kingdom of God, because for this purpose I have been sent.”

How about another example of Jesus saying “no”? This is the story of the healing of the Gerasene demoniac. “The entire population of the region of the Gerasenes asked Jesus to leave them because they were seized with great fear. So he got into a boat and returned. The man from whom the demons had come out begged to remain with him, but he sent him away, saying, “no”. You cannot remain with me. Return home and recount what God has done for you”. The man went off and proclaimed throughout the whole town what Jesus had done for him.

How about one more example? “When the days for his being taken up were fulfilled, he resolutely determined to journey to Jerusalem, and he sent messengers ahead of him. On the way, they entered a Samaritan village to prepare for his reception there, but they would not welcome him because the destination of his journey was Jerusalem. When the disciple James and John saw this, they asked, “Lord, do you want us to call down fire from heaven to consume them?” Jesus turned and rebuked them, saying “no!”

The point is that Jesus, in his ministry, often told people “no”. Not because he didn’t love them or because he didn’t want what was best for them, but precisely because he did love them and knew that saying “yes” wouldn’t be in their best interest. What we need to remember is that whenever Jesus says “no”, or when, like me, your mom and dad told you “no” when you were young and foolish, every “no” was always accompanied by a “yes”.

So here is what my mom and dad would say to me…. “No, Nick, you may not stay out late with your friends.”

Also mom and dad… “Yes, Nick, I want to protect you and keep you safe. And staying out late beyond your curfew will only get you into trouble with your still-developing brain; a brain still in need of much wisdom in decision making.”

What about Jesus in today’s Gospel… “No, I cannot stay with you any longer.”

Also Jesus… “Yes, I must go to other towns to preach the good news.”

Mom and dad… “No, Nick, you may not eat junk food for dinner.”

Also mom and dad… “Yes, Nick, I want you to be a healthy young man.”

Jesus… “No, you cannot stay in my company.”

Also Jesus… “Yes, you must go to others and tell them what I have done for you.”

Again mom and dad… “No, Nick, you cannot take the summer off and hang out with your friends all day.”

Again, also mom and dad… “Yes, Nick, you must get a job because you will learn important life skills that will prepare you for the long road ahead.”

And again Jesus… “No, James and John, I will not reign fire down on the Samaritan people.”

And also Jesus… “Yes, James and John, I love the Samaritan people dearly and do not want them to be harmed.”

When we receive a perceived answer of “no” from God it is, admittedly, not easy and just a little bit frustrating. Why would God say “no” to healing my sick child? Or why would He say “no” to blessing me with a new, stable, good-paying job? Or why would God ever say “no” to anything I ask for? The answer lies in His love for us and His perfect knowledge of what is best, even when we cannot see or understand it. Even if we never learn the reason for His “no” in this life, we must trust Him – not blindly, but with honesty and struggle. For every “no” from God is always accompanied by an even greater “yes.” Our understanding of this, however, requires spiritual maturity.

St. Paul in his letter to the Corinthians reminds the people of this. They were unable to fully grasp what Paul and Apollos were truly preaching about Christ. They were like little children in need of a loving parent with a firm hand, for their own good. So, like a good parent, Paul did what my mom and dad did, he told them what they needed to hear, so that they might grow and mature as people of faith. It’s very similar to how when I was young, I couldn’t fully grasp why my mom and dad always told me “no”. I wasn’t mature enough to understand the reasoning behind their answer. In the words of St. Paul, I was too fleshly. I wasn’t spiritually mature enough yet. But with time, I matured, I learned, and now I know that their “no” was never really “no”, but always a “yes” born out of love.

So let us not grow wear or troubled when we feel like God has not answered our prayers, but let us find solace and comfort in receiving His Most Precious Body and Blood, knowing that our every prayer is heard and answered in God’s own special way.

Warning Signs

Posted on by Tim Hinkle

By McLean Bennett, OFM Cap.

Major events in history are usually the culmination of a series of warning signs — signs that frequently have gone unheeded until it is too late.

That’s what was happening in Jerusalem at the time of Ezekiel, today’s prophet.

We’ve all heard about the “Babylonian exile” — a stretch of time when the people of Judah were taken out of Jerusalem and forced to live without their temple to God.

There were spiritual reasons for this exile, Ezekiel reminds us. People in Judah were worshiping idols and not God.

And this exile to Babylon did not begin all at once; it happened gradually. The Babylonians conquered Judah in a series of invasions, with Babylon only eventually taking over the Jewish kingdom, bit by bit.

Ezekiel was a victim of one of the first invasions, and so he began writing at a time when many of Judah’s citizens — but not all of them — were victims of war.

Importantly, the temple had not yet fallen in Jerusalem. But Ezekiel writes in warning about its impending destruction. That’s what today’s reading is all about.

Today’s first reading is filled with some doom and gloom — and Ezekiel wrote it that way on purpose. Jerusalem was guilty of serious sins against God, and therefore deserved its exile, Ezekiel is telling us.

But there are hints of hope and optimism in Ezekiel, too.

First, there is the promise of mercy for those marked with the “Thau,” or an x-shaped symbol, on their foreheads. This was the mark given in Ezekiel’s prophecy to those who had not participated in Judah’s idolatry, but who had wept over the condition of the temple.

Moreover, God’s departure from the temple and the city of Jerusalem is depicted in Ezekiel and elsewhere in the Old Testament as gradual — as if God was patiently waiting in hope to see whether the gathering storm clouds of exile would result in repentance.

And, if we were to keep reading from today’s section of Ezekiel, we’d see that shortly after today’s first reading, the prophet provides the assurance that the Babylonian exile will not last forever, but will end when God gathers together God’s people and brings them back to their homeland.

God has wounded his people, but will bind up again.

In a sense, that is also the message from the Gospel. The message from Jesus is all about repentance, a process that involves the relationship we have with others and with the church.

Sin and self-centeredness bring us outside of our communion with God, just as it brought about exile for the inhabitants of Jerusalem.

But this exile need not last forever. We can come back to God.

Today (and every day) represents another opportunity for our return to God. Jesus, who shows up every day on our altars, always offers the same invitation: Come back to him; come back to Jesus and find life and communion.

Scapegoating

Posted on by Tim Hinkle

By Br. McLean Bennett, OFM Cap.

There is something of a cottage industry on social media these days: The posting to the internet of videos of people doing bad or stupid things … and then getting their just deserts.

If I scroll through YouTube, I almost inevitably end up coming across a video titled something like: “Idiot driver crashes into semi.” What’s caught on camera is a video of someone driving too fast or too recklessly, and then slamming into a big truck. Viewers are encouraged to say things like: “Well, he had that coming!”

Or a person might be filmed in the midst of a tense conflict with someone else — sometimes with the person holding the camera — and we’re invited to watch their spectacular, public meltdown. “It’s OK,” we’re supposed to think. “They deserve to be called out and ridiculed!”

It’s easy to turn people into a meme, ridicule their actions and justify our pleasure in our doing so by insisting that it’s all simply a carriage of popular justice.

This isn’t a new phenomenon.

As a friend of mine pointed out to me a few years ago, what goes on in today’s world of social media is simply a modern variation of what we used to call “scapegoating.” We turn our enemies into objects of derision — and tell ourselves that we stand on the side of moral virtue.

Scholars would perhaps point out that this is what’s going on in today’s first reading, which is all about the Assyrians — or the “scoundrels,” as the prophet Nahum calls them.

The Assyrians were hated by just about everyone — and they might have deserved it. They were famously brutal, and had made a lot of enemies, including the Israelites of Nahum’s time.

About a century before he wrote, Assyria had conquered much of Israel, pressing many of Abraham’s descendants into a violent exile.

But by the time of today’s first reading, the Assyrians had fallen to the Babylonians — the Mediterranean world’s newest big empire.

Nahum’s whole purpose in writing was to point out that the Assyrians had finally eaten their humble pie, and that the whole world was taking note.

Today’s first reading seems to take a gleeful bit of pleasure in the Assyrians’ downfall.

There’s a different tone in today’s gospel, in which Jesus prescribes a different way of approaching our relationship to the world — even a world that wanted to crucify him.

“Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.

“For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”

There is nothing here about breaking one’s enemies. There is nothing here about humiliating one’s opponent — even if we’re sure our opponent deserves to be humiliated.

To be like Jesus, to follow him and be his disciple, is to carry a cross. And our cross, like Jesus’, is a cross that brings healing not only for us, but also for our enemies.

Praying for those we don’t like might not come naturally or by instinct. It’s easier to lash out and to scapegoat.

At Mass, we pray at the altar that in consuming Jesus’ body and blood, we ourselves might be made an eternal offering to God.

As we walk out of this chapel, the ground beneath our feet might well be thought of as the altar on which we make this offering — the place where we carry our own cross.

We might ask: For whom are we carrying that cross today?

Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Posted on by Tim Hinkle

By Br. McLean Bennett, OFM Cap.

I remember the gymnasium in which the ceremony was held. I remember my family visiting, and getting to show them around my college town — and finally getting to try eating at the nicest restaurant downtown. (Without my parents around, I’d never been able to afford it.)

Most of all, I remember this sensation that the hardest thing I’d worked for all my life was finally over. I had completed my 16th year of education. I had jumped through all the academic hoops that life had put in my way, and I was ready to coast through the rest of my life.

Or so I thought.

I had reached what I thought was the apex of my childhood ambitions, but found that life kept unfolding in front of me. I found out that work didn’t get easier with a college degree; it just kept coming.

The history of my life, you might say, didn’t end with what I’d expected would be its most climactic moment. Life had simply changed direction.

It’s taken me a while to find a way to connect my life to the feast that we celebrate this week: the Assumption of Mary.

For a long time, I simply approached this feast with the idea that here was an historical event from the life of Mary — Mary has gone to heaven — and we as a church were simply memorializing it.

In a certain sense, of course, that’s true. This is an important historical event, and we are memorializing it.

But does it have any connection to our lives today?

I suppose we might begin by meditating on what it means that history did not simply come to an end after Jesus’ death on the cross… or after his resurrection… or after his ascension into heaven.

Indeed, these moments were sort of like humanity’s “graduation ceremony” — the things we’d all been waiting for before the time of Christ.

And, yet, for Mary and for each one of us, life since the year 33 A.D. has kept on going. And we’re left to sort out for ourselves what Jesus’ life and ministry and death and resurrection all mean for us.

Mary’s life shows us that the redemption won on Calvary continues to unfold in time — it didn’t happen once and then the story of humanity was finished. Mary had to get to her assumption.

For Mary, whose relationship with her son was so special, hers was a special type of entry into eternal life. We’re called to the same heaven, though; the same eternity with Jesus.

And that means we still have our lives to live, too. Our own finishing lines to arrive at.

At every Mass, we commemorate once again the re-presentation of all that Jesus did for us at Calvary. This, we might say, is a bit like living, once again, our “graduation ceremony.” It’s the most important thing we’ve waited all our lives to experience — and we get to experience it anew every day.

And if we remain faithful to what the Eucharist calls us to, then we, like Mary, will be able someday to enter into eternal life. (Our “last” graduation ceremony.)

“When I found your words, I devoured them.” – Jeremiah 15:16

Posted on by Julius Milton

By Br. McLean Bennett, OFM Cap.

In the Old Testament, we are told about a king of Judah (one of King David’s descendants) who decided to repair and renovate the temple in Jerusalem, which at that time had fallen into some disrepair. In the midst of this renovation, workers stumbled upon the book of the law — a book of the Torah, scripture written by Moses — which had apparently been set aside and forgotten about for many years.

When the king read this re-discovered book, he was surprised to learn that his kingdom had been breaking its own laws for a very long time. All of this is what Jeremiah, the prophet, is referring to when he says: “When I found your words, I devoured them.” Jeremiah would have been alive at the time of the book’s re-discovery and the renovation of the temple. And, for him, this was a moment of profound joy.

And so, it is curious that this joy was so complicated. Jeremiah immediately notes that, despite his joy at having found God’s word, he was nevertheless in suffering.

And so, Jeremiah complains to God. He calls himself “a man of strife and contention,” and says that he regrets ever being born. It’s interesting to note that Jeremiah can feel, all at once, great joy in God’s word, and frustration with its consequences.

I suppose that we might be able to relate a little bit to this. Certainly, we have moments of joy in our relationship with God. And we probably relate to the phenomenon of feeling that the joy of being God’s disciple can become a bit sour when our Christian identity introduces some strife and contention in our lives. Living as a Christian requires our experiencing a real and authentic relationship with God. But this is not meant to make life easy.

The grace of a true relationship with God — the grace of true joy — usually comes wrapped in the mundane simplicity of daily life. It comes, usually, in our families, at our dining room tables, in the hours spent working behind the scenes for one’s children, spouses or aging loved ones. It’s a grace that we find working in ourselves when we keep coming back to Mass and back to prayer in the face of whatever challenges we encounter in our Christian lives.

May God bless you!

All the World’s a Chapel

Posted on by Tim Hinkle

By Br. McLean Bennett, OFM Cap.

During one of my first official years of formation to become a Capuchin, the other friars and I would attend Mass together every day of the week. We always did so in the same large chapel that was at the center of our formation campus.

The chapel’s front doors were quite large (and heavy), and I remember what it was like to walk through them at the end of each Mass.

“I’m walking out onto my altar now,” I’d tell myself as I walked through those doors and onto the concrete sidewalk outside. I liked to imagine that the whole world beneath my feet was now my “altar.”

The Mass I’d just participated in wasn’t really “over,” I’d think to myself; I was now simply living a continuous reprisal of that Mass, with every moment of the rest of the day an opportunity to experience and re-experience eucharist and sacrifice.

The whole world became my chapel, and every square inch of ground beneath me an altar on which I lived and gave up my life.

This idea began to change the way I looked at everything.

The Mass was no longer something I went to, nor was it something that simply lasted for an hour on Sundays, or thirty minutes on weekdays. Every moment of every day could become an occasion for worship, and everything I experienced in life could find some sort of connection to the Mass.

This was a helpful type of spiritual growth for me, but I encountered problems with it. Inevitably, I’d forget during the day about this wonderful idea that I was “on my altar.” The world that I had decided could remind me of God was always distracting me from God.

If I wasn’t careful, I could lose the sense of spiritual balance and bliss that I’d carried out with me after Mass in the chapel.

Encounters with others could become mundane daily interactions with people who needed something from me: My attention, a task or a job to do, an errand to carry out.

Even as I was learning to try bringing the Mass into my everyday life, I was finding that my everyday life kept preventing my doing so.

It wasn’t until I had a conversation about some of this with a spiritual director that I found a way to try overcoming the problem.

“Find God in all the things that distract you from God.” This was the message my spiritual director gave me, and I suspect there is a great deal of truth in it.

We don’t simply stop celebrating or attending Mass when we walk out of these doors. If we have encountered Jesus in the Eucharist, we can trust that he’ll go with us as we head off into our distracting daily routines.

And if Jesus the Eucharist is with us throughout our day, then every moment of every day can become an occasion to render a simple “thanksgiving” to God (this is exactly what the word “Eucharist” means, after all).

This remains true even if we find ourselves distracted from the sorts of spiritual thoughts that we might wish could stay with us throughout the day.

If a spouse, a child, a boss or co-worker, a neighbor or even a stranger demands of us an attention we’d have rather given to God, we can still find ourselves offering that attention to God, even if our attention seems aimed at the spouse, a child, a boss or a stranger.

Jesus in today’s Gospel is having a conversation with the Pharisees, who were bothered by the fact that Jesus’ disciples were picking grains of wheat and eating them on the Sabbath.

Jesus’ response was straight from the prophet Hosea: God prefers mercy over sacrifice. In a way, the merciful acts we show to others — the bits of our attention we pay to those who demand it of us, even when we’d rather not — become acts of sacrifice.

The moments we say a simple “thank you” to God during the course of the day — and we should be able to say “thank you” even in the midst of anything — become little echoes of the Eucharist we are about to share together this morning.

Let us be merciful to everyone outside these doors, and let us allow that mercy to become an extension of the sacrifice in which we now participate.

The Conventional Wisdom

Posted on by Tim Hinkle
Photograph of Rodin's

Wednesday of the 20th Week in Ordinary Time

Judges 9:6-15; Matthew 20:1-16

Following the commonly accepted wisdom isn’t always the wisest thing to do. Abimelech asked the leaders of Shechem whether they thought it would be better for their people to be led by 70 people or by one. He convinced them to accept one, and he proceeded to murder his 70 brothers. Abimelech proved to be a terrible leader. Shechem soon revolted against him, and he was eventually killed when a woman in a house he was attacking dropped a stone on his head.

In today’s gospel parable, Jesus challenges our commonly accepted notions of what is fair. The master of a vineyard gives the same wage to his day laborers, regardless of when they started their work.  Those who started early grumble with resentment. Those who started work with just an hour to spare are silent. We don’t know if they were overwhelmed with gratitude or simply made a quick get-away to celebrate their good fortune.

The point of this story is two-fold: it demonstrates that the gates of salvation are open to all, and it underscores God’s almost incomprehensible generosity and the richness of his grace.  We live in a world that often demands that there be winners and losers, the chosen and the left behind. The kingdom of God that Jesus proclaimed is a different world, and he invites and challenges us to live in it. jc

—————————————————————————————————————

Miércoles de la XX semana del tiempo ordinario

Jueces 9,6-15; Mateo 20,1-16

Seguir la sabiduría comúnmente aceptada no siempre es lo más sabio. Abimelec preguntó a los dirigentes de Siquem si pensaban que sería mejor para su pueblo ser dirigido por setenta personas o por una. Los convenció de que aceptaran a uno, y procedió a asesinar a sus 70 hermanos. Abimelec demostró ser un líder terrible. Siquem pronto se rebeló contra él, y acabó muriendo cuando una mujer de una casa que estaba atacando le tiró una piedra a la cabeza.

En la parábola del Evangelio de hoy, Jesús desafía nuestras nociones comúnmente aceptadas de lo que es justo. El dueño de una viña da el mismo salario a sus jornaleros, independientemente de cuándo hayan empezado a trabajar.  Los que empezaron temprano se quejan con resentimiento. Los que empezaron a trabajar con sólo una hora de sobra se callan. No sabemos si estaban abrumados por la gratitud o simplemente hicieron una escapada rápida para celebrar su buena fortuna.

El sentido de esta historia es doble: demuestra que las puertas de la salvación están abiertas para todos, y subraya la generosidad casi incomprensible de Dios y la riqueza de su gracia.  Vivimos en un mundo que a menudo exige que haya vencedores y vencidos, elegidos y excluidos. El reino de Dios que Jesús proclamó es un mundo diferente, y nos invita y desafía a vivir en él. Jc

Asistencia de traducción proporcionada por DeepL.com®

Photo by Avery Evans on Unsplash

Signs of Spring

Posted on by Tim Hinkle

By Fr. Tom Zelinksi, OFM Cap.

In recent years I have been thinking that it’s important for us to look and look again at familiar things so that we really see and appreciate them.

Here in the upper Midwest we are surrounded by signs of spring. Little ducklings already; soon little geese; buds and new leaves on trees; soon new fawns will appear. The birds flutter in their nest building. Hummingbirds, tiny creatures, return after traveling hundreds, maybe thousands of miles from their winter homes.

The skeptic may say “So what? This all happens every year.” Indeed it does, and it all appears like so many miracles. We ought to pay attention. Against this backdrop of the “peaceable kingdom,” we see less appealing news. I saw a scary statistic that said 75% of all plastic is NOT recycled. Where does it end up? Our planet home is sick. We need to do better for the sake of all the creatures, including ourselves.

There is the steady drumbeat of war and violence in the news; some things seem downright evil.  I watch the silent holy deer in our woods and ask “How can there be evil in such a world?”

We come back to ourselves in the springtime. Can we look, and look again, and appreciate what we see? Can we find peace and justice in ourselves and share these with all neighbors?

Beatitudes

Posted on by dbi_admin

By Fr. Tom Zelinski, OFM Capuchin

This week we read Matthew Chapter 5 in our daily Mass readings: the Sermon on the Mount. We start with the Beatitudes. Jesus teaches from a hilltop. Perhaps this reflects the Old Testament story of Moses and the Ten Commandments. Jesus is sometimes seen as the New Moses.

But the Beatitudes are not so much commandments as they are an invitation to see and appreciate what is already part of our humanity. Jesus says “Blessed are they . . .” Another word would be “Happy.” And the beginning statement is perhaps the key. Blessed, happy are we when we recognize our spiritual poverty. This is not something we work for or try to achieve. If we are honest, we are all poor and needy before God and each other.

So much of our world runs on ego: be first, be a winner, be self-sufficient, be in control. Soon we might add: be miserable, be angry, don’t trust anyone, be afraid of anyone “different” from me.

Jesus tells us happiness comes from facing our vulnerable reality, our need for others, accepting times when we must weep,
even times when we are persecuted for doing good. And there are things to do: be a peacemaker, hunger and thirst for righteousness. This way to happiness may not appear in the advertising on television.

Building Bridges

Posted on by Tim Hinkle

By Fr. Tom Nguyen, OFM Cap.

Dignity is a blessing and gift from God that each person has, which cannot be taken away. Today, we are called to stand up for justice through love and peace! We must find ways to build bridges that lead from the cross to resurrection. May we pray for greater awareness of human dignity and work together to build a world grounded in the Gospel life. Look another in the eye and see them as your brother and sister!

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